“When it was known that your husband was to be one of the waiters in the pavilion, the plan was laid. He had been given detailed instructions about his duties by his employers. The group was given even more detailed information from an agent inside the Embassy. And Chubb’s orders were based on this information. He had been a commando and was very well suited indeed for the work in hand. Which was this. When the lights in the pavilion and the garden went out and after a shot was fixed in the house, he was to disarm and disable the spearman who was on guard behind the President, jump on a chair, and kill the President with the spear.”

She was shaking her head to and fro and making inexplicit movements with her hands.

“No?” Alleyn said. “Is that wrong? You didn’t know about it? Not beforehand? Not afterwards? But you knew something was planned, didn’t you? And you were frightened? And afterwards you knew it had gone wrong? Yes?”

She whispered. “He never. He never done it.”

“No. He was lucky. He was hoist — he got the treatment he was supposed to hand out. The other waiter put him out of action. And what happened after that was no business of Chubb’s.”

“You can’t hurt him. You can’t touch him.”

“That’s why I’ve come to see you, Mrs. Chubb. It may well be that we could, in fact, charge your husband with conspiracy. That means, with joining in a plan to do bodily harm. But our real concern is with the murder itself. If Chubb cuts loose from this group — and they’re a bad lot, Mrs. Chubb, a really bad lot — and gives me a straight answer to questions based on the account I’ve just given you, I think the police will be less inclined to press home attempted murder or charges of conspiracy. I don’t know if you’ll believe this, but I do beg you, very seriously indeed, if you have any influence over him, to get him to make a complete break, not to go to any more meetings, above all, not to take part in any further action against anybody — Ng’ombwanan, white or what-have-you. Tell him to cut loose, Mrs. Chubb. You tell him to cut loose. And at the same time not to do anything silly like making a bolt for it. That’d be about the worst thing he could do.”

He had begun to think he would get no response of any kind from her when her face wrinkled over and she broke into a passion of tears. At first it was almost impossible to catch the sense of what she tried to say. She sobbed out words piecemeal, as if they escaped by haphazard compulsion. But presently phrases emerged and a sort of congruence of ideas. She said what had happened five years ago might have happened yesterday for Chubb. She repeated several times that he “couldn’t get over it,” that he “never hardly said anything,” but she could “tell.” They never talked about it, she said, not even on the anniversary, which was always a terrible day for both of them. She said that for herself something “came over” her at the sight of a black man, but for Chubb, Alleyn gathered, the revulsion was savage and implacable. There had been incidents. There were times when he took queer turns and acted very funny with headaches. The doctor had given him something.

“Is that the prescription he’s getting made up now?”

She said it was. As for “that lot,” she added, she’d never fancied him getting in with them.

He had become secretive about the meetings, she said, and had shut her up when she tried to ask questions. She had known something was wrong. Something queer was going on.

“They was getting at him and the way he feels. On account of our Glyn. I could tell that. But I never knew what.”

Alleyn gathered that after the event Chubb had been a little more communicative in that he let out that he’d been “made a monkey of.” He’d acted according to orders, he said, and what had he got for it? Him with his experience? He was very angry and his neck hurt.

“Did he tell you what really happened? Everything?”

No, she said. There was something about him “getting in with the quick one according to plan” but being “clobbered” from behind and making a “boss shot of it.”

Alleyn caught back an exclamation.

It hadn’t made sense to Mrs. Chubb. Alleyn gathered that she’d felt, in a muddled way, that because a black man had been killed Chubb ought to have been pleased, but that he was angry because something had, in some fashion, been put across him. When Alleyn suggested that nothing she had told him contradicted the version he had given to her, she stared hopelessly at him out of blurred eyes and vaguely shook her head.

“I suppose not,” she said.

“From what you’ve told me, my suggestion that you persuade him to break with them was useless. You’ve tried. All the same, when he comes back from the chemist’s—”

She broke in: “He ought to be back,” she cried. “It wouldn’t take that long! He ought to’ve come in by now. Oh Gawd, where is he?”

“Now don’t you go getting yourself into a state before there’s need,” Alleyn said. “You stay put and count your blessings. Yes, that’s what I said, Mrs. Chubb. Blessings. If your man had brought off what he set out to do on the night of the party you would have had something to cry about. If he comes back, tell him what I’ve said. Tell him he’s being watched. Keep him indoors and in the meantime brew yourself a strong cuppa and pull yourself together, there’s a good soul. Good morning to you.”

He ran downstairs and was met at the drawing-room door by Mr. Whipplestone.

“Well, Sam,” he said. “Through no fault of his own your Chubb didn’t commit murder. That’s not to say—”

The telephone rang. Mr. Whipplestone made a little exasperated noise and answered it.

“Oh!” he said. “Oh, yes. He is. Yes, of course. Yes.”

“It’s for you,” he said. “It’s Mrs. Roderick.”

As soon as she heard Alleyn’s voice, Troy said: “Rory. Important. Someone with a muffled voice has just rung up to say there’s a bomb in the President’s car.”

IX

Climax

Alleyn said: “Don’t—” but she cut in.

“No, listen! The thing is, he’s gone. Five minutes ago. In his car.”

“Where?”

“The Embassy.”

“Right. Stay put.”

“Urgent,” Alleyn said to Mr. Whipplestone. “See you later.”

He left the house as Fox got out of the car under the trees and came towards him.

“Bomb scare,” said Fox. “On the blower.”

“I know. Come on. The Embassy.”

They got into the car. On the way to the Embassy, which was more roundabout than the way through the hole in the wall, Fox said a disguised voice had rung the Yard. The Yard was ringing Troy and had alerted Gibson and all on duty in the area.

“The President’s on his way back,” Alleyn said. “Troy’s had the muffled voice, too.”

“The escort car will have got the message.”

“I hope so.”

“A hoax, do you reckon?”

“Considering the outlandish nature of the material we’re supposed to be handling, it’s impossible to guess. As usual we take it for real. But I tell you what, Br’er Fox, I’ve got a nasty feeling that if it is a hoax it’s a hoax with a purpose. Another name for it might be red-herring. We’ll see Fred and then get back to our own patch. That Royal Academician in the Mews had better be keeping his eyes open. Here we are.”

They had turned out of a main thoroughfare, with their siren blaring, into Palace Park Gardens, and there outside the Embassy, emerging from his police escort’s car, was the Boomer, closely followed by his mlinzi and the Afghan hound. Alleyn and Fox left their car and approached him. He hailed them vigorously.

“Hullo, hullo!” shouted the Boomer. “Here are turn-ups for the books! You have heard the latest, I suppose?”

“We have,” said Alleyn. “Where’s the Embassy car?”

“Where? Where? Half-way between here and there, ‘there’ being your own house, to be specific. The good Gibson and his henchmen are looking under the seats for bombs. Your wife required me no longer. I left a little early. Shall we go indoors?”